The Telegraph takes a peak inside Chiswick's Oddfellows Hall... a Victorian building, built by the masons, and featuring four entrances and four addresses. It's been used as a wedding venue and an artist's studio, before the current owner - an estate agent/property developer - snapped it up for £385,000 in 2002 (I know, I know) and gave it a radically modern re-fit. Now it's all plasma screen in the bathroom ceiling, under-floor heating and cinema rooms. What's it doing in the Telegraph? It's for rent... £3,900 a month, from Featherstone Leigh. I can't find Japanese water feature nor wet room of it on the FL website, but luckily you can see more pictures here.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

An Acton man has been put on the sex offenders register for seven years after being found guilty of wiring a camera between his bedroom and the communal bathroom, so that he could watch his flatmates [not pictured] showering. His plan was apparently scuppered when one resident discovered a lens in the wall, and followed a wire up the outside of the building to the man's attic room.

[via Londonist]

Technorati Tags: London

According to a survey by Savills, the following addresses are potential candidates for future primeness. The important driver is an influx of professionals combined with nice existing stock, preferably Victorian or Edwardian homes. The advantages to being "prime"? If you've been reading the Rat and Mouse at all over the last few years you'll know that prime London tends to outgrow the rest of London, indeed the rest of the UK. So here goes:

• Tooting ("the new Notting Hill")
• White City
• East Acton
• Tulse Hill
• Camberwell
• Fortis Green
• Finchley
• Brondesbury
• Willesden Green
• Cricklewood

[via the Times]

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

HKR Architects have put in a planning application for a giant shopping and residential development opposite Ealing Broadway station. The new Arcadia Centre will feature Ealing's first skyscraper, designed by Foster + Partners, and architecture journal AJPlus has turned up the first image...

Technorati Tags: architecture, London, property, real estate

According to this, from Australia, Williams is considering leaving LA to move in with his best friend and former housemate actor Jonathan Wilkes, plus Wilkes' wife and son. Apparently, Wilkes has been spotted house-hunting in Chiswick.

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Rosalind Russell, writing in the Telegraph, pays designer of theatrical fashion Gail Berry a visit in her theatrical Hanwell semi (which, as it happens, is for sale, with Hamptons, at £665,000... although you won't find it on their website right now). It's a story of chandeliers in every room, Gothic detail and small dogs.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

Remember this?

Dec has bought a £1.9 million house just 150 yards away from Ant in Chiswick. It's a mock-Tudor mansion, which style-icon Dec intends to demolish as soon as possible and replace with a mock-Edwardian mansion, identical in every way to Ant's home. And to achieve this, he will be employing Ant's architect, Stuart Hemingway.

Looks like his neighbours have spoken...

Technorati Tags: celebrity, London, property, real estate

Everybody wants to live in Chiswick right now. Have you ever wondered what one of those flats above the shops on the High Road is like? Here's a new conversion, on the market with Featherstone Leigh, comprising four bedrooms, one reception and two bathrooms... 1,948 square feet of space. It's listed at £595,000, and it's very convenient for Superdrug.

Chiswick is "an area that's been coming up, but no one talks about it very much," said Dalton, of Knight Frank. "But it's an area that needs to be spoken about and shouted about.

That's Knight Frank's Tony Dalton talking to the International Herald Tribune about W4 - home to Dennis Waterman and Ant and Dec. The Trib's hyping Chiswick like it's just invested in property there... insisting it's both the new Notting Hill, the better Belgravia and family-friendly Ealing rolled into one. Which I guess it kind of is, if restaurants, organic food shops and Nick Jones's plans for Fouberts are the criteria. But I lived on the border of Chiswick (in other words, Hammersmith) until very recently (and always liked the place), but I'm just finding the whole hoo-hah hard to buy for one reason and that's geography. Call me a spoilsport, but once you get past Fulham isn't there some kind of inescapable cap on coolness? Especially on an area dominated by the sounds of the A4? I hope I'm wrong. It would be nice to see some money filter out away from what the agents like to call "prime central" London... the Rat and Mouse will be paying particular attention to Chiswick house prices throughout 2006. What do you think... let us know.

Platform romance [May 6]
Bedford Park - sanitory [March 24]
Ant and Dec are buying Chiswick [March 18]

Colette Browne, who set up Chiswick estate agency PropertyGarden.com has told the Sunday Telegraph that she believes rival estate agents are targeting her with a dirty tricks campaign. She claims local agents have wasted her time by posing as customers and are stealing her for sale boards. You can read the full story here. You can also earn yourself a £200 reward by photographing the board rustler in action. Make sure you get a clear shot of the vehicle, and its registration number, so Browne can round up a posse and run the varmint out of town.